January 12, 2009

Cinema Eye Announces New Short Film Initiative

Responding to calls last year for a short film component to the Cinema Eye Honors, organizers announced today that five nonfiction short films have been named to the inaugural Cinema Eye Shorts List, representing some of the best of the field in 2008.

In a statement, Cinema Eye co-chair Thom Powers, Documentary Programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, said, "Rather than give an award to just one film, we thought it was preferable to create this honor list to recognize five works."

The CEH Shorts List was chosen by a committee of eleven film programmers who specialize in nonfiction shorts, led by committee chair Karen Cirillo, short film programmer for True/False and Doxita. A full list of nominators is after the jump.

The five films named to the 2008 CEH Shorts List are:

BREADMAKERS (UK)Directed by Yasmin Fedda

CITY OF CRANES (UK)Directed by Eva Weber

KIDS + MONEY (USA)Directed by Lauren Greenfield

ONE DAY (Denmark)Directed by Ditte Haarløv Johnsen

THE TAILOR (Spain)Directed by Oscar Perez

The films named to the Shorts List will be recognized at the Cinema Eye
Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking, scheduled for March 29, 2009 in New
York City.

Last Thursday, January 8, Cinema Eye announced the fifteen nonfiction feature films that have been named to the 2009 Cinema Eye Shortlist. Feature film nominations for the 2nd Annual Cinema Eye Honors will be announced January 19, 2009 at 2:30 PM at a reception in Park City, Utah during the Sundance Film Festival.

An 11-person Cinema Eye Shorts Nominations Committee voted for five
favorite nonfiction short films from 2008. Votes were then weighted by
rank. The five named to the shortlist received the highest totals
points.

In the same statement, I said, “After last year’s awards, there were a number of people who lobbied
for Cinema Eye to include nonfiction short filmmaking in its awards. We were excited that Karen agreed to take up this task and excited to include these fine films in our honor roll for 2008.”

“I was thrilled to lead the effort to embrace short documentaries at
the Cinema Eye Honors,” said Cirillo. “Filmmakers are making extremely
creative, moving and beautiful short works and it has been my pleasure
to help gain recognition for them.”